CHAPTER XXVII

THE "HIERONYMI OPERA OMNIA": CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE POPE

One of the reasons why Erasmus dreaded a return to Steyn was that he had a restless spirit. He was a bird of passage and could not, even if he would, stay long in one place. When in England he longed for Germany, and when in Germany his aspirations were for Rome. The search after codices of the various authors partly, and partly the search after possible gifts to support him in his literary labors, were responsible for this in great measure; and yet, withal, it was the inheritance of the neurasthenic, the inability to be perfectly content anywhere, that kept him wandering all his life from country to country, welcome everywhere but happy nowhere. He had no sooner reached Basle than he began to write back to England, to see if by chance his absence had made his patrons there long for his return, which brings back forcibly to us his advice to Ammonius on that subject.' Among others he wrote to Colet in this strain; and though we have not the letter itself, we have Colet's reply, which we will give here:

Dear Erasmus. I received your letter written from Basle, August 30, 1514. I am rejoiced that we know where you are, and under what sky you live, and I am also rejoiced to know that you are well. See to it that you perform your vow to St. Paul that you told me about. That they have made so much of you at Mainz, as you write, I can easily believe. I am glad that you will come back to us sometime; yet I cannot bring myself to expect it. Concerning the matter of a better recompense for you I know not what to say, except that those who have the means are unwilling, and those who are willing have not the means. All your friends here are well; Canterbury [Archbishop Warham] shows his accustomed suavity, Lincoln [Wolsey], now rules at York, London [Fitzjames] continues to harass me." Daily I meditate on my retreat and retirement with the Carthusians. My nest there is almost finished. When you return to us you will find me there, dead to the world, as far as I can see. Take care of your health, and let us know whither you betake yourself. London, October 20, 1514.

It is evident that Colet believed in the power of the saints to intercede and obtain favors for the living, as is shown by his reminding

1 See page 336.

Wolsey, who was already Bishop of Lincoln, had just been appointed to the archbishopric of York. Fitzjames was Bishop of London, and had already accused Colet of heretical tendencies.

a Eras. Ep. 314.

Erasmus not to forget the vow to St. Paul which he made when he was suffering the agonies of lumbago. It is also evident that the monks of Shene, with whom Colet designed to pass the rest of his life, were not of the Erasmian kind. Lupton, in his Life of Colet, quotes from a little manuscript volume which once belonged to Shene and is now among the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum, the following instructions for novices:

For your body you are to weare a shirte of heare, and a cord aboute your loynes, and a wolen shirte. You are to lye upon strawe or a bed of chaff, with a blanket betweene. For your diet, it is a perpetuall abstinence from flesh, in so much that in the greatest or most daingerous sicknes you can expect no dispensation therein. Also a goode parte of the yeare wee abstaine from all whitmeates, as in Advent, Lent, and all the Fridays of the yeare. . . . For silence and solitude, it ought to be perpetuall, except when our statutes giveth licence, or that you aske leave.*

Then follows an enumeration of certain services to train and discipline the novice

. in the purgative way; menial tasks of sweeping, and the like; which workes, by howe much they are more vile and contemptible in the eyes of the world, by soe much they are more pretious and meritorious in the sight of Almighty God.

This marks another difference between Colet and Erasmus, the one believing that the mortification of the body was meritorious in the eyes of God, the other calling it mere formalism and Judaic superstition. The monastic life was a harsh life, as we are aware, but it had no terrors for Colet, who was ascetic by nature, had no objections to a diet of fish, and could see a reason for fasting that evidently was not vouchsafed to Erasmus. But this is not the place to contrast the two men, whose differences were as striking as they were numerous.

Many of the letters which Erasmus has preserved for us are letters addressed to him by the greatest scholars of Germany, such as Henry Bebel, professor of Poetry and Rhetoric at the University of Tübingen, and author of a work on adages; Willibald Pirckheimer, who, after a thorough education in the schools of Germany and Italy, settled down in Nuremburg, of which town he soon became councilor, and was afterwards made a Councilor of the Empire by Maximilian, who valued his scholarship so greatly that he often consulted him on matters purely literary; John Witz, or Sapidus, who took his degree at the University of Paris in 1506; and many others. But the learned men whom he met personally, and who had exerted all their powers of persuasion on mutual friends to bring about an introduction to the great man, are too numerous to mention here, and we shall meet most of them again. One instance alone may be given here of the wonderful desire that he inspired in these men to see and know him. Pirckheimer is earnestly begging Beatus Rhenanus, who has already met

'P. 217.

Erasmus, to help him to the acquaintance of the famous scholar, saying:

Although I have merited the notice of the Emperor, have acquired the favor of various kings, have obtained the friendship of learned and distinguished men, and seem to be well esteemed by the rest of my friends, yet I would not consider the friendship of so illustrious and erudite a man among the least of my fortunate possessions, but would value it far more highly than my most precious belongings. Strive, therefore, I beg of you, that I may be enabled to acquire his friendship, for you can do nothing else for me that would be so gratifying. You promised in your letter that you would visit me here sometime; and oh! if you were to bring with you such a guest, with what good will and affection would I greet him! I hope, and my mind assures me, that I shall not die without seeing him, and that it will be given to me to speak with him face to face."

So closed 1514, and the new year found him working hard on his St. Jerome and his New Testament, comparing copies, examining ancient codices, and occasionally calling on those of his acquaintances who were skilled in Hebrew to throw light on obscure passages. His time was so absorbed in these occupations that he could not see half the people who desired to meet him; but, if they were noted for scholarship, or influential by virtue of wealth or position, he would write them a letter varying in length in direct ratio to their importance. Beatus Rhenanus fully obeyed Pirckheimer's injunction to make him acquainted with Erasmus by sending the latter the epistle quoted above. The sentiment of this so pleased Erasmus that he interrupted his pressing work to send Pirckheimer a letter couched in those flattering phrases in whose use he was a past master, telling him that Rhenanus had spoken so much about him that he was already inflamed with affection for him, and that, even before that time, he had read his works, adding that the splendor of his learning had adorned his wealth, and the splendor of his wealth had added lustre to his learning. He went on to say that the desire of such a man to obtain the friendship of him, Erasmus, who amounted to so little, was surprising, since this friendship was something which he himself had long desired but never dared expect. Then he tells him that, as a messenger was just leaving, he was sending him a few literary trifles, since he preferred to accompany his letter to him with even such trash as these rather than with nothing at all. He was living in hopes, he said, of having plenty of leisure soon, when he would write him not letters but volumes. He closes his letter by telling him that he is returning to England in March, from which statement we may conclude that something had happened to change his decision with regard to visiting Rome at this time.

His work on St. Jerome was already coming off the press, and the manuscript of the New Testament was ready for the printers. He was torn between his desire of seeing this latter work through the press and

Eras. Ep. 318.

his longing to return to England; but, since he had decided that this work on the Scriptures should be his masterpiece, he not only sacrificed to it his projected journey to Rome, but also deferred his return to England for the same compelling reason. But at length he set out on the return journey, after having spent almost eight months at Basle, during which period he had performed the Herculean task of copying, castigating, revising, and reading the final proof of his various works which were then printing, or to be printed after his departure. One of these which we have not previously mentioned was an edition of Seneca's Lucubrationes omnes, for which he had prepared the corrected and annotated text while in England. This he dedicated to Thomas Ruthall, Bishop of Durham, one of the three English bishops from whom he expected and probably received great assistance. After writing the preface and dedication as above, he left it in the hands of the printers, and began his journey across the Channel. The book was slow in being issued; and it was not until August that it was finished, and Ruthall did not see a copy of it until the following year, much to the chagrin of Erasmus.

Erasmus left Basle sometime in the second week of March, 1515, and visited Frankfort in company with a party of Swiss and German booksellers. This was no bad stroke of business policy in itself, for the great book fair at Frankfort was the efficient means of dispensing editions of one's works at a profit. Here, too, he met Hutten again, as he had previously met him at Mainz; but evidently they had not arrived at any such degree of intimacy as obtained between them in later years. From there he went to Antwerp, where he probably stayed with his friend Peter Gilles; thence to Ghent, where he was delayed by John Le Sauvage, the imperial Chancellor, who had just begun to help him with money and influence; thence to St. Omer, where he called on the Abbot again. After this we lose sight of him, but assume that he crossed the Channel by way of Calais and Dover, arriving in London about the last week in April. Probably the last work which he touched before leaving the continent was his Enarratio allegorica in primum psalmum, which he left behind him at Louvain to be printed by Martens, who issued it in October, 1515. This he dedicated to his friend Beatus Rhenanus; and as this psalm begins with the words Beatus vir qui non ambulauit, etc., Erasmus rang the changes on the Beatus in a hundred different ways in this dedication, finally winding up by sending his Beatus to his Beatus as the only present that he deemed at all consonant with his friend's character. From all that the after days tell us it would seem that he had entrusted the care of seeing his St. Jerome through the press to Beatus Rhenanus; and to no one else could he better have assigned this task than to this ardent admirer, both on the ground of scholarship and on the ground of his being willing to do this sort of drudgery for the great Erasmus. This connection, based on a mutual esteem of each for the other, lasted for the rest of Erasmus' life; and in Beatus, as a consequence, we have his first and most reliable biographer, making due allowance for certain instances wherein the younger man's admiration may have biased his judgment in a few minor details of his famous friend's life and activities.

And, speaking of Rhenanus, we take this occasion to refer to something in Nichols's translation of Erasmus' letters which we feel ought not to be passed over in silence. In writing to Erasmus at about this period, Rhenanus says:

Your kinsman here has received two gold pieces from Froben, and he was all the more welcome to us, because he resembled Erasmus so much in his features that, even if he had not told us in so many words, the similarity of his person would have immediately declared him to be your relative."

Out of this remark of Rhenanus to Erasmus we find Nichols drawing an undoubtedly wrong conclusion. He says:

This epistle contains a passage that has not, so far as I know, attracted special attention, but is calculated to excite some curiosity, as touching on the private life of Erasmus. The bearer who had lately arrived at Basle bore a great resemblance to Erasmus, and was apparently in some way nearly related to him, how near is left to the reader's suspicion."

This inference of Nichols is unfortunate as insinuating that this was an illegitimate son of Erasmus, and unjust as it is based on no evidence. Besides, it is unnecessary in explaining Rhenanus' remark. only to remember that Erasmus' brother Peter was still living and, hearing that he was in Basle, might have been in a position to make a call on him; but it is far more probable that it was some cousin, of whom he must have had a great many considering that his father was one of ten brothers, and this does not include possible cousins on his mother's side. Were Nichols's insinuation correct, it would have been in utterly bad taste for Rhenanus to have referred to the matter at all. But what tells most strongly against such a possibility is that, though Erasmus' enemies accused him of a great many things in the period we are now approaching, there never was the slightest allusion to any such disgraceful circumstance as this. So we feel that we are only doing Erasmus justice when we say that Nichols was entirely wrong, not only as to the fact, but also as to his exercise of judgment in sending forth such an ungrounded suspicion.

Every time that Erasmus had crossed the Channel hitherto something unpleasant had happened, and this time was no exception, for he lost his baggage. This was a serious loss indeed, as we learn from his letter to Peter Gilles :

7

My baggage, which I had entrusted to the brother of Francis,* has not arrived, and to me nothing could be more unfortunate, for in it are all my commentaries on Jerome; and if I do not receive it soon they will have to stop work at Basle on what they are now printing, which will be disastrous. If this has happened by chance, it has happened most unfortunately; but if it has been Ibid., 330.

Epistles of Erasmus, Vol. II, p. 204.

Francis Birckman, an Antwerp bookseller.